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I've moved into a different phase of seeing what happens if I stop killing myself with prescription drugs like methotrexate and Humira. It's not my joints that are bothering me so much presently as the long bones in my forearms and the gout in my feet. It's not so much a dull ache either, but a sharper pain that's very specific, localized, and ongoing. Ouch!
I ignore all this and move around like I wanna. It's deliberately done with some false vainglorious aplomb. Well, what passes for aplomb at my age and condition. I don't exactly strut when I go for a walk along the sidewalks of the Wal-Mart strip mall, but I try to walk with some dignity and a touch of military bearing. No sense in inviting trouble if there's no need. Trouble will come in it's own time.
It's like I'm sobering up from all the prescription drugs I've been taking. The only way I know how to deal with stuff like this is to go back to the roots of when I first might have noticed the symptoms. When I contemplate my life with some specific clues I'm filtering for, it's like working a difficult crossword puzzle.
What I'm realizing via my meditations is that I've been dealing with arthritis for years and probably decades before it was diagnosed as such. The point of my searching for these early indications appear to be that I'm realizing that I handled this on my own without knowing it was a recognizable disease.
I'm not sure if being diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis (and several other bone diseases) has made much difference after the fact, except that it makes getting pain pills easier. My doctors don't think I'm faking when I say I need something. RA is an incurable progressive disease. I accept that my symptoms ain't gwine get no better. They could get a lot worse, and probably will because I'm getting older along with having these progressive diseases making me feel less manly.
One of the habits I've been able to keep going is practicing the scales on my digital piano. It's not an activity that many people with crippling arthritis do. I make myself do it. I'm the only-est one who can. Playing the scales by following the Circle of Fifths was a lot easier to do when I was actively taking prednisone steroids, that is, until the prescription runs out.
After a few days of using this miracle drug I feel practically cured, but it's a false healing. When the prednisone runs out and the pain monkey gets on my back again it's like I never used the drug in the first place. Physically, anyway. Mentally, I'm always grateful to know some drug or the other will offer relief.
The prednisone vacation is very nice. It's about the only pain-killer I use that truly gets the job done, and makes me feel delusionally high and mighty without merit simultaneously. I'm very familiar with delusions of grandeur. I personally think working through them is the cat's meow. It's something a person does for-themselves. Prednisone pushes me into a bold arrogance I usually won't let myself get to without extreme trepidation. Of course there's a price to pay, but I'm willing.
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I do not attempt to tell the God's own truth here because I don't know what the truth is or hardly ever. I try to capture the drifting thoughts that randomly appear in my imagination for reasons I may not understand. I don't know if the content I capture with these words is true or false. The Comments settings are turned off to prevent me from having to defend what amounts to little more than fanciful, sometime crude speculation. Great moments in our lives never return.
